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Fantagraphics Still Fits Right In To Maple Leaf

The lead-up to last Saturday’s Record Store Day conjured in my mind thoughts of Fantagraphics. That Seattle-based company claims the mission of publishing “the World’s Greatest Cartoonists” and works in that beloved old-timey world where actual paper is used to publish ideas. Some of you might remember it. In 2006, Fantagraphics opened their bricks-and-mortar retail store (pictured above) in the decidedly hip Southwest Seattle neighborhood, Georgetown. It shares a building with Georgetown Records – another browse-worthy emporium of countless, cool items – and showcases some of the wide range of books and related products they produce.

Fantagraphics has been around since the 1970s, and relocated to Seattle in 1989 (by way of Los Angeles after its genesis in Baltimore). For those truly starting from the table of contents, they publish under the umbrella of “comics”. Included in their regular publication schedule are comic books series, graphic novels, erotic comics, anthologies, periodicals like “The Comics Journal”, and classic comics compilations. Their list of published writer-artists runs a crazy broad gamut – Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware, Joe Sacco, Daniel Clowes, Ralph Steadman, Los Bros Hernandez, Peter Bagge, and loads of classic cartoonists including Seattle native Hank Ketcham (“Dennis the Menace”). Just expect you’ll find someone you know on their scroll.

Other comics publishers have fallen all over themselves trying to leverage a hoped-for crossover appeal into the mainstream of culture in the last twenty or so years. Meanwhile, Fantagraphics has hung surprisingly tight to their mission statement.

But the bigger surprise for me came from learning that Fantagraphics still runs its publishing operation out of the same full-to-bursting house in Maple Leaf where they first planted their Seattle roots in 1989.

Let’s get something straight before going any further – Fantagraphics doesn’t want people stopping by their house. That means you. Sorry – you’re still generally a good person. The point is that in their Maple Leaf home, they do the artistic and business side of publishing comics. Besides, being invited to enter and tour the house gives one the sinking suspicion that they’d be happier being left alone altogether. Maybe you’ll see the people that work there when they grab some lunch from the Safeway at Roosevelt and 75th Northeast, or run to Rooster’s for a coffee. But please don’t just come by. If you’ve got a comic to pitch, be a professional and read the approach they’ve spelled out on their website. You’d probably only hurt your slim chance of actually being cool enough for a publishing contract if you came by the house.

The house is stuffed with books, boxes of comics and art, all of which is treated as a lending library to the lucky few who work there. The people working at the house in Maple Leaf seem entirely low-key about their current and for-the-foreseeable future digs. When I asked Co-Publisher Gary Groth why they’re still up in Maple Leaf, he responded that “this is a good house”. Of course it was delivered with a look that screamed “we’re not so vain that we need to be seen working somewhere else.”

Like much of the publishing industry, Fantagraphics has needed to weather some past financial turbulence. They’ve done so with help from, among many others, artists and writers who’ve been published by Fantagraphics. The uninitiated fan or first-time observer might see it as I did – these folks work surrounded by the stuff they’d be consuming even if they worked somewhere else. So having far flung friends that go to bat for them when needed is not a surprising game plan.

Having an influential comics publishing house cranking out art from an otherwise unenthusiastic Maple Leaf house probably doesn’t surprise many folks living in Northeast. Things seen on that block could be or probably are happening most anywhere in Seattle. The, let’s just say, openly displayed signage of a very artistic neighbor. The recent departure of a gaggle of twentysomethings living in an upstairs apartment, allowing for a much needed renovation. The dichotomy of an I-5 on-ramp split from a neighborhood street that surely gets missed both ways more than a small handful of times every single day. This is a neighborhood, different because it is like any other. So why not publish the World’s Greatest Cartoonists from this one?

For the time being, Fantagraphics appears anchored by their Maple Leaf digs. More importantly, the comics they produce feel as vital as ever. Recent acquisitions include the rights to translate and publish the works of Jacques Tardi (Co-Publisher Kim Thompson is doing the translation from French himself). They’ve even found the resources to hire a few new people, who appear to have found places to nestle in amidst everything else in the house.

To maybe tie a bow around my thoughts on Fantagraphics this week, I was struck by a new category of books when I went by the new Elliott Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill. Up near the front, close to the “Staff Recommendations” shelf and new title tables stands the first section of shelves. They’ve called that up-front new section “Graphica” – which sounds like a bad mash-up of “graphic whatever” and “erotica”. Fantagraphics fits right in there, and many of their titles are displayed prominently. They really wouldn’t belong anywhere else. Even if no one really knows what the name means. Or even why it’s right there. It just is.